Thursday, June 1, 2006

I Think We Found Our Own Flag-Burning

I've always wondered why Democrats haven't been able to find some utterly trivial issue (e.g., the War on Christmas) and hype it like all get out*. Seriously, there had to be something stupid that the Democrats could use. I'm not saying they've always been accurate ('the Social Security lockbox'), but even that was about something important--Social Security.

My friend Mrs. Robinson, a Silicon Valley refugee who comments frequently here, sent me a note along with the link to this piece:

I spent eleven years in the games business. I left in large part because I realized that most of what was being turned out by the mid-'90s were games designed to desensitize kids to killing, either covertly or very overtly. I felt like I was helping the right-wing train its next generation of soldiers. It wasn't a good feeling. I needed to do something else.

When something like Abu Ghraib or Haditha happens, I feel the weight of that all over again. This game...well, I guess it speaks for itself.

Here it is: your at-home training camp for the next generation of eliminationists.

It will be revealing, I think, to see how many good "Christians" snap up copies of this game -- and how many actually endorse it or defend it.

Is this video game stupid and trivial compared to the carnage in Iraq, the spiraling deficits, 44 million people without healthcare, or the slow-motion destruction of our scientific infrastructure? Absolutely. But plenty of politicians have prospered with stupid.

Democrats should immediately start asking if Republican'ts support this video game, if Republican'ts believe that those who are not Dominionist Christians should be gunned down in cold blood, and if Republican'ts think Catholics aren't good Christians (just watching Bill Donohue's head explode from that alone would be worth asking the question).

What this does is establish the idea that Republican'ts are beholden to eliminationist religious fanatics (and while we're discussing word usage, the Democrats must begin to use the word 'eliminationist' every chance they get). This is how we win–or at least rollback–the culture wars.